Everyday Canvas

The Worst and the Best Together

Prompt: “It was the worst of times. It was the best of times.” Charles Dickens -- When has this happened in your life?

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“It was the worst of times. It was the best of times.” The beginning of The Tale of Two Cities, one of the books that had impressed me greatly when I was in my teens. I am planning to read it again. Recently I began reading old stuff that I hadn’t touched for several decades, such as Anne of Green Gables series. I liked those books even better in old age.

I have never enjoyed reading the same book twice but when a lot of time has passed--as it has been more than five decades--the appreciation is different. There are books I didn’t like as much at second reading, also.

As to the best and the worst together in my personal life, the first thing I remember was a younger cousin’s second pregnancy. I had seen her just before she became pregnant, and she had told me they were trying for a second baby, as she would be very happy to have a second child. I loved this cousin very much, and when she became pregnant again, I and our whole family rejoiced, but the birth didn’t go as planned. She passed away, but there was a bouncing, healthy baby boy. The older child, a little girl, was only six years old, and her grief broke all our hearts.

Another thing I remember was the year I was about to get my BA degree. During the last semester my mother became gravely ill with hepatitis, and she wanted to spend her last days at home and insisted so vehemently that the doctors had to give in, but then she rejected a hired nurse and demanded on my caring for her. So I left school for that semester and took care of her, even though I was at the head of the class and the profs told me not to leave. Fortunately, like a miracle, my mother recovered in a few months, and I graduated the following semester, although I would have liked to graduate with my class. I was a semester late; still, it all turned out for the better, unlike the first example when my cousin passed away.

Sometimes, life throws us a curved ball under sunny skies. We just have to make the best of things.